Official Blog of Author MICHAEL THOMAS BARRY.
A blog which discusses varied topics that are related to the authors many books. Michael is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books.
Questions or comments can be sent to ocauthor6434@gmail.com

Monday, May 23, 2011

Trudy Marshall & James Burke

Due to travel...I was unable to blog from Thursday, May 19-22.

On May 23, 2004, actress Trudy Marshall died. She was born Gertrude Marshall on February 14, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. A popular magazine cigarette girl during her modeling days for Harry Conover, she was at different times "The Old Gold Girl," "The Chesterfield Girl", and "The Lucky Strike Girl."

Marshall was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1942 and groomed in bit parts. She played a featured role was in the World War II war drama The Fighting Sullivans (1944), the true story of a family that lost all five enlisted sons in the sinking of the USS Juneau off Guadalcanal in November 1942. Marshall played a surviving sister Genevieve who joins the Navy after her brothers' death. Taking roles as a decorative ingénue for a time, Marshall later played the "other woman" in a few features. She played a featured role in The Fuller Brush Man (1948). Semi-retired by the 1960s, she returned very infrequently to Hollywood. She appeared in the movie Once Is Not Enough (1975) which launched the film career of her daughter Deborah Raffin. Marshall was the hostess of her own radio and TV show in the 1980s in which she interviewed stars who attended special Hollywood events. She died on May 23, 2004 in Los Angeles and is buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City.

On May 23, 1968, actor James Burke died. He was born in New York City on September 24, 1886. Burke made his stage debut in New York around 1912 and went to Hollywood in 1933. He made over 200 film appearances during his career, which ranged from 1932 to 1964. He appeared in The Maltese Falcon, At the Circus, Lone Star, and many others. In the early 1950s, Burke appeared with Tom Conway in the ABC detective drama series then called Inspector Mark Saber -- Homicide Detective, later renamed, reformatted, and switched to NBC under the title Saber of London. From 1960-1961, Burke appeared in the role of Zeke Bonner in seven episodes of the ABC western television series Stagecoach West. Burke suffered from a heart condition, which took his life at the age of eighty-one on May 23, 1968. He is buried in a unmarked grave at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.